


In Another Life

by PlacentaMilk



Category: SOMA (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, i absolutely adore the game, i just really wanted to write something soma related, its an amazing story and so original, this is short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-10-23 06:31:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17678258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlacentaMilk/pseuds/PlacentaMilk
Summary: "This is hell, isn't it, Catherine?" He asks.He doesn't get a response back. He didn't expect one.





	1. Chapter 1

For a long time after Catherine shorts out, the only sound Simon hears is the space gun settling, the metal creaking in the dark with the water moving sluggishly.

He sits for awhile, shock still. His mind blanks and he doesn't think for a long time. He can't, he doesn't want to.

Catherine Chun lied to him and left him down here at the bottom of the ocean to rot, and suddenly, with a flurry of emotions, he's  _pissed._

He's stuck, but kicks his way out of the pilot seat eventually, after what seems like an hour, a day, maybe a week of sitting there. His hand - sorry, there's no longer a hand _there_ \- stump, holds himself up on the armrest of the seat while he uses his legs to smash the console in front of him. He doesn't care about the broken Omitool still attached to it, he thinks wildly, legs thrashing. Catherine didn't care about him. He now only cares about getting out.

He does. He thinks he might've hurt his foot, somehow, in kicking the console away from him. Feet aren't supposed to bend that way, at an awkward angle, but he can't feel the pain. He's a robot trapped in another person's lifeless body. He doesn't have nerves. Even if he did, if he could somehow be in this person's body instead of being a cortex chip connected to a pair of eyes - _camera's, right?_ \- and a suit, the nerves would all be dead by now. Lifeless.

He thinks about leaving the Omitool down here, connected to the smashed console, just to spite Catherine.

But then he remembers what she said about what it felt like, and knows she would never know that the power cut out. She would never know that she's connected to a fucking broken door opener, and that's too easy for her. If he ever connected her back to power, she would think only a couple seconds had passed, maybe a couple minutes. No, she's going to suffer with him. An eternity - _probably not, a power pack only has so much life in it, right?_ \- stuck with him at the bottom of the ocean is good for now. He thinks that it's not enough, it will never be enough, but it's a start.

He pries it off of the console and makes his way back to Phi. Of course, even if the power was on, his broken door opener won't do much. He sets to tucking the Omitool under his less useful arm, and trying to unlock the heavy bolts in the flush door, but it proves useless. He's no more powerful than the suit is, especially with only one hand. The Omitool slips from his armpit but it just floats to the ground with an unsatisfying, dull thud.

He growls and thrusts his fist forward, driving it into the metal of the door.

It doesn't hurt. There are no nerves to send warnings to his brain. No brain to send them to. Just metal stuck with rotting flesh, all put together with black goop. He bets, though, after he spends maybe an hour just punching the door, that if he were human and more than a cortex chip, his knuckles would be bruised and bloody inside of the glove. The bones in hands fracturing, splitting off small pieces and lodging themselves in places the muscles have made no room for. He imagines it would hurt. A lot.

He thinks back, briefly, to all of the monsters he's encountered. All of the times he was caught. None of those ever hurt - well, when the proxy had fried his circuits, that hurt. When Terry Akers flew down the stairs, howling, he had turned around and started running with what felt like adrenaline rushing through his ears. He screamed when he was caught, and he was terrified, but when he woke up again nothing hurt. There was nothing  _to_  hurt.

The only thing that could possibly hurt now is the phantom feeling of emptiness in his chest, that isn't really there because he's not capable of feeling it in this lifeless body composed of bloated, grey flesh and structure gel. It hurts, though, whether it's there or not. Catherine betrayed him. While part of it is his fault, yes, he admits, he was too stupid to see how this was going to end. _No_ , he corrects himself harshly. He knew as soon as he switched bodies back at Omicron. He just let himself be guided by Catherine's easy words, let himself continue to lie in ignorance. Catherine manipulated him, she never cared about him and she made it clear that she would do the mission on her own given the chance, but Simon let her manipulate him.

He cries.

No, he doesn't have tear ducts to cry out of anymore. He sits in the feeling of overwhelming hopelessness and shattered self-pity. He's stuck, here. At the bottom of the ocean. A broken Omitool and the WAU creatures lurking in the dark, watching him, as his only companions.

That hurts.

He sits against the locked flush door that he can't open. Even if he could, somehow, twist the locks and pry the door open - successfully flooding Phi, might I add - what comes after? He's needed the Omitool to do so many things, and Catherine has done most of those things for him. Even more importantly, without power, getting back to the climber would prove impossible. No lights to follow. No power to pull the climber up, no Omitool to start the climber's ascent.

He thinks, again, for the billionth time, that he's stuck at the bottom of the ocean.

"This is hell, isn't it, Catherine?" He asks.

He doesn't get a response back. He didn't expect one.

He must sit there, forever, his earlier anger forgotten. A short beeping sound comes around eventually, gradually spaced apart with hours between each burst of sound. The distance gets shorter, as time goes on, and Simon knows it's from his suit.

"Five percent battery life remaining. Please step out of the suit and replace the battery pack."

Maybe he'll actually die. Maybe he'll just wink out of existence. Maybe he won't even know he's gone, like putting pause on a video game except he's the main character and the video game will never resume.

"One percent battery life remaining. Please step out of the suit and replace the battery pack."

He thinks for a moment it'll hurt, but thinks back to all the times his cellphone died. It just powered off and that was that. He's nothing more than a robot.

The tiny automated voice doesn't come again. He jus


	2. Chapter 2

When he wakes up, he's disorientated and confused. It's dark, and the atmosphere is completely different from what it previously was. Now, it's silent and deadly, closing in on him. "What happened?" He asks, blinking as he tries to look around, as if blinking will make the darkness go away. The head scan piece is still on top of him.

After a moment, the mechanics whirr, and it lifts up and away. The lights are off, only a dim red glow coming from some corner of the room. "Hello? Mr. Munshi?" His hands grip the armrests and he pushes himself up, looking around and waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dark. "Did something go wrong?"

He thinks maybe the scan caused a power outage, maybe Dr. Munshi ran out of the room real quick to restart the power. It's plausible, when he first saw the machine he wasn't that enthusiastic to climb into it. Simon looks down at his hands, feeling really weird - as if he were disconnected from his body - but seeing nothing out of place. "This isn't funny." He steps forward, his heartbeat picking up.

He really doesn't like this. He doesn't like the feeling of the room, anymore. It was quite small before they started but now it feels too big. He feels like he's being watched, the phantom of sight placed on his back. "I-I'm not supposed to put myself in-" he cuts himself off, looking around the dark room, waiting for the lights to come on. He puts his hands out as he starts to walk, not wanting to bump into anything. "This is kind of stressing me out!"

He stumbles over to the red glow, boots clicking against metal - wasn't the floor tiled? - and he pulls down the lever underneath the small red glow of a button, hoping that it'll turn the lights on.

It does, and the lights are way too harsh at first. He waits for a moment, staring at the metal paneling that definitely wasn't there before they started, before turning to look back around the room. His heart stops in his chest and plummets into his stomach. 

This isn't the tiny office with rickety machinery put together in an abandoned building back in Toronto.

He doesn't know where he is.


End file.
